BLUE EAGLE 2.0 or why we should demand a new National Industrial Recovery Act

 

BLUE EAGLE 2.0 or why we should demand a new National Industrial Recovery Act

                                        

THE ORIGINAL BLUE EAGLE: When corporatist reform Democrat Franklin Roosevelt became president on March 4, 1933, his priority was to end the Great Depression and restore the normal functioning of American capitalism.

A big part of his ‘100 days program’ was the National Industrial Recovery Act, the body that carried out that law the National  Recovery Administration, NRA, (popularly known as “The Blue Eagle” because of its distinctive logo,  often seen posted at businesses that participated in the program) chaired by WW I US Army logistics planner General Hugh Johnson, with the National Recovery Review Board, chaired by famed defense attorney Clarence Darrow, the tribunal that enforced the body’s rulings.

 

Title I of the act was designed to regulate prices and wages  in industry. Trade associations representing businesspeople in a given industry were permitted to draft industry codes. These codes regulated fair trade practices, set minimum prices and set a wage floor for the minimum wage in an industry.

 

This title also allowed workers to join trade unions of their own choosing and prohibited employers from forcing workers to join employer-controlled company unions.

Title I also set a blanket code for industries where the trade associations had not set minimum labor standards; a minimum wage between 20 cents and 45 cents an hour, a maximum workweek of 25 to 45 cents an hour and a prohibition on child labor (an abominable practice that was still very widespread in 1930s America)

 

Title II set up a Public Works Administration, a government agency using federal funds to build public buildings and infrastructure, with authority to use eminent domain to seize public land for these  facilities if necessary. This was intended in part as a jobs program for construction workers, most of whom were out of work at the time

 

Title II also set forth the mechanisms of how the program was funded and also contained an abortive program to buy rural farmland and relocate unemployed workers to that land so they could become farmers.

The entire law was temporary, intended to expire within two years – basically because many American capitalists were reluctant to support any kind of central planning, both because of the revolutionary anti capitalist implications of that and due to the fact that this planning would involve respecting workers trade union organizing rights

 

Roosevelt’s goal was a labor-management-government partnership to end the great depression.

 

Almost immediately, workers took advantage of the union organizing rights under Title 1 – workers flooded into unions of all stripes; from the American Federation of Labor and the railroad brotherhoods on the segregated, pro capitalist right to the Trade Union Unity League, Industrial Workers of the World and Knights of Labor on the militant, integrationist anti capitalist left.

 

AFofL, railroad, TUUL, IWW or KofL, the workers flooding into these unions immediately began waging militant strikes demanding their union rights under Title I Section 7a of the NIRA

 

This is exactly what the industrialists feared!

 

Add to that the new laws prohibited unfair trading practices and sweatshop labor and the employers were livid

 

In New York City, the trade association that regulated the Kosher live poultry distributor industry had imposed rules prohibiting its members from selling diseased chickens to the Kosher live poultry butchers that supplied fresh meat prepared under Jewish religious laws to the city’s huge Orthodox Jewish community.

 

Preventing the sale of unhealthy meat would  seem to be a perfectly reasonable idea – especially if the meat was consumed by members of a marginalized group who would have a hard time finding an alternative supply of  meat that fit their religious dietary requirements

However, one particularly egregious offender, the Schecter Poultry Corp., felt that the law’s ban on selling unsafe chicken interfered with his constitutional rights.

 

The Supreme Court agreed with him.

 

So, the NIRA was found to be an unconstitutional infringement on the rights of low road irresponsible businesspeople and the NRA was shut down

 

Some of the NIRA’s labor and jobs program provisions became part of other laws but the program itself came to an end

 

What can latter day American workers learn from this experience?

BLUE EAGLE REDUX? The original NIRA was legislation intended to save capitalism. However the capitalists themselves rejected it, because of its defense of labor rights and restrictions on predatory business practices.

 

The conservative federal courts of the day agreed with the businesspeople and held their rights to be bad actors to be more important than our right to fair pay and responsible business practices.

 

The American working class of the day should demand an updated version of the National  Industrial Recovery Act, to deal with modern day issues of low wages, workplace democracy, price gouging and antisocial business practices.

 

I would propose that all non agricultural, non  domestic service related businesses with more than 50 employees who are in interstate commerce be required to conform to a code of conduct for their industry that would set wages, benefits, working conditions, labor standards, prices, safety, health and fair business practices.  

 

On the employer side, the trade association or associations in the industry would draw up the sections of the industry code of conduct that  cover pricing, fair  business practices, and product safety standards.  

 

Those standards would be subject to review by the federal government and the associations could be directed to revise them as necessary.

An individual business wouldn’t have to join the association or associations, but they would still be bound by the code of conduct. If they wanted a voice in the code of conduct, they would be permitted to join the relevant trade association or associations and those organizations would be required to allow them to join.

 

The sections of the code of conduct covering wages, benefits, working conditions, labor standards and workplace safety and health standards would have to be bargained with elected representatives of the workers employed in the industry.

The workers employed in that industry would have a right to affiliate with a labor union and if a majority of the workers in the industry signed authorization cards for a labor union, the association or associations in the industry would be compelled to recognize that union as the bargaining agent for its employees.

 

Unions that do not have certified bargaining status would also be allowed to have a presence in the industry and their members would be allowed to run for delegate posts, as would members of the union with official bargaining status and workers who were not members of labor unions

 

Union affiliated or not, the delegates would still be directly elected by the workers in the industry and workers employed in the industry would be permitted to run for delegate post regardless of their membership or non membership in the labor unions.

 

Workers would be allowed to join the union that has official bargaining status, or to join any other labor union of their choosing. Workers would also not have the option of joining the union but they would have no voice in the bargaining decisions of their  union and not be eligible to vote in union elections or run for office in the unions.

 

All the labor unions in the industry, with majority bargaining status or not, and the workers delegates, union or not, would have reasonable access to the workplaces covered by the code of conduct to investigate grievances, enforce the code of conduct and represent employees facing discipline.

 

Those union representatives, worker delegates and the workers they represent would have freedom of speech in the workplace (the same workplace freedom of speech rights that only employers and management personnel have under current American labor law)

THAT’S ALL GOOD BUT HOW THE HELL DO WE DO ALL OF THAT? The proposal I outlined above wouldn’t end American capitalism or US imperialism – American industry, finance and commerce would still be run by the capitalist class and small business owners, they would still control the economy and federal, state, county, city and tribal  governments would still prioritize their financial interests over our needs

 

However, this proposal would reform some of the worst excesses and abuses of American capitalism. It would also do much to moderate the irrationalities and inefficiencies of America’s business community. Above all, this proposal would be a huge step forward in terms of bringing a measure of industrial democracy to the despotism that is the American private sector workplace

Of course, that last part would be the sticking point.

 

Business owners are overprivileged in the American workplace

 

When you are privileged, equality feels like oppression.

 

This would cause much resistance on the part of the employing classes.

 

Also, having democratic regulation of the economy poses a mortal threat to the capitalist class’s control over the economy and is a huge step forward to workers power and the abolition of the capitalist system.

 

It would take a huge organizing effort on the part of the American working class to even make an attempt at achieving this.

 

We’d need an independent interracial mass workers party and that party would have to build a new labor movement to even attempt to fight for any of this

 

But it would be well worth it